Translation: There’s a LOT of people willing to get arrested to make their point on Keystone. They’re going to dog Obama wherever he goes and cause a ruckus — and there’s nothing TV loves more than footage of a bunch of liberals getting arrested while protesting a liberal president.

And it’s not just Obama they’re focusing on. Team Credo and their fellow anti-pipeliners are going to do everything from stage sit-ins at Team Obama’s Organizing for Action offices around the country to blockade financial institutions that back the pipeline’s construction. But only IF Obama approves the pipeline.

Protest organizers say one of the first target dates is Obama’s visit to San Francisco April 3 for what insiders tell us will be a $32,000-per-couple DCCC fundraiser. No civil disobedience there, but there will be protesters.

“Yes, we will be telling people to comment during the public comment period (for the pipeline’s approval) and sign petitions and all that, but that’s not enough,” Credo’s political director Becky Bond told us. She calls the project the “Obama Tar Sands Pipeline.” “We have to do something that’s different.

“We want to give people a way to go big,” Bond said.

For progressives, this hot lefty-on-lefty action will be a painful to watch. The Credo team spent most of 2012 trying to defeat Tea Party congressional candidates around the country, ostensibly to help Obama. But as we told you months ago, enviros and other top liberals are ticked that Obama seems to be leaning toward greenlighting Keystone XL, despite talking up how he wants to take major action on climate change during in his State of the Union and second Inaugural addresses.

This SF protest will be a preview of how the Credoites — joined by SF’s own Rainforest Action Network and other progressive and enviro groups — are planning to trail the president wherever he goes around the country. In the next week, they will begin training supporters how to engage in nonviolent direct action around the country.

Credo reports that 916 of its members say they’re willing to organize and lead a civil disobedience event in their city, according to responses to an online solicitation sent. Another 3,537 say they’re willing to travel to get arrested along the proposed piepline route.

Now if you’re willing to travel to Nebraska to get arrested for standing next to a proposed pipeline route, wow, THAT’S dedication.

As for when all this is going to happen, here’s the rough timeline: Once the State Department officially enters its opinion on the pipeline, there will be a 45-day public comment period. The final decision could come any time a month after that. And there is still a lot to dig through on that report. The enviro site Grist reports that the State Department report was written by a TransCanada contractor.

For an early look at the Keystone protests, we dig into the Shaky Hand Productions Video Archive and Wine Cellar to call up this demonstration outsidee Obama’s October 2011 fundraiser in San Francisco. There we caught up with Susie Tompkins Buell, one of the nation’s leading Democratic fundraisers, who was demonstrating in opposition to the pipeline: